The most important thing in your marriage is not your marriage. It is your relationship with God. All of your marriage flows out of your relationship with him. God doesn’t merely hand you a shovel and tell you to try harder. He teaches husbands and wives to love with a love they first received from him.

You won’t have a beautiful marriage merely because you want one.

Newlyweds often assume affection will carry them through their married life. It won’t. A wedding plants the seed. It doesn’t grow the garden. This year, my wife and I celebrated eighteen years of marriage. I love being married. But after nearly two decades, I’m more convinced than ever that a good marriage doesn’t grow just because we want it to. It has to be cultivated.

Song of Songs uses garden imagery as a picture for marital love. The bride is called “a locked garden” (4:12 CSB). Later she says, “Let my love come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits” (4:16), and the bridegroom responds, “I have come to my garden—my sister, my bride” (5:1).

The garden image gives newlyweds both hope and responsibility. It means your marriage can grow. There is always a more beautiful, fruitful version of your marriage to enjoy. But beautiful gardens don’t just appear. If you’ve ever visited botanical gardens or admired someone’s flourishing backyard, you know at least one thing: Someone worked hard to make this vision become a reality.

Marriage requires the same kind of work. You have to cultivate the garden, pull the weeds, and remember its purpose.

Cultivate Daily Habits of Growth

What makes a garden flourish isn’t one dramatic event. It’s daily cultivation. A beautiful and lasting garden needs planning, seeds, sunlight, daily watering, and good soil. Marriage needs continual nutrients and care.

No one waters a garden once a year and expects it to flourish. You can’t ignore it all year and then dump a thousand gallons of water on it. The same is true in marriage. One vacation, one anniversary trip, or one extravagant gesture can’t replace what only daily cultivation can do.

Newlyweds especially need to learn this early: Your marriage will mostly be shaped by small, repeated habits. The patterns you establish now will either make future love easier or make future repair harder.

So eat together. Review your upcoming week. Pray together. Go to church together. Kiss when leaving and returning home. Write love notes and thank-you notes. Go on planned, intentional dates as often as possible. Don’t only watch a movie; have meaningful conversation by asking questions like, Where have you seen God be good to you? What’s on your heart? How can I pray for you? What evidences of grace do you see in me?

These habits may not feel impressive, but they are formative. You won’t see fruit overnight. It will take time. But repeated daily interactions plant and grow a healthy marriage.

Pull the Weeds Quickly

But if marriage is a garden, cultivation isn’t only about watering. You also have to pull weeds. You have to remove what chokes growth.

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